Madoff's victims are getting paid back, but what about us?

My newspaper tells me that the investors who got bilked by Bernie Madoff are going to get at least some of their money back.

Specifically, it says this: “The estate of billionaire Jeffry Picower, an investor in Bernard L. Madoff’s Ponzi scheme, agreed to forfeit $7.2 billion to victims of the fraud, bringing the amount collected by authorities to $9.8 billion. Irving Picard, the trustee liquidating (Madoff’s company), sued Picower in May 2009, claiming he withdrew $7.2 billion more than he invested. Picard said that investors in Madoff’s Ponzi scheme, the largest in U.S. history, lost $20 billion in principal.”

I’m glad for those investors. No one likes to be cheated.

So when's our turn? When do we go after the skunks on Wall Street to pay back the rest of America for lost jobs, ruined finances, crushed 401ks and deflated home values? Shouldn't there be a Madoff-type effort for us? We were bilked by Wall Street as surely as Madoff's victims were by him, right?

Sure we were. And yet we did our part in cleaning up the mess made by the banking and mortgage industries. We bailed out companies left and right. And many of those companies are doing just fine now, judging from all the bonuses they’re paying out.

But none of that money is going to us. Is that fair? Hey, financial sector, how about, you know, a little something-something for our trouble?

Just so you know, the average American hasn’t “recovered” yet. We’re making do, moving on, licking our wounds. But we haven’t recovered.

I’ve seen estimates that Americans have lost some $12 trillion in net worth since 2007. That’s a lot of dough, most of it mine and yours. It certainly wasn’t the rich’s. According to Wikipedia, “The very rich lost relatively less in the crisis than the remainder of the population, widening the divide between the economic classes. Thus the top 1 percent who had a share of 34.6 percent of the nation's wealth in 2007 increased their share to 37.1 percent by 2009.”

Those who “have” get, I suppose. I guess I don’t know many haves. Everyone I know has suffered. I have a friend who lost his house. Others lost jobs. Everyone lost huge chunks of their investments and retirements. Most of Michigan owns homes that are suddenly worth less than what they’re worth. The value will never return. We’re a state held captive. You can’t move unless you can afford to, essentially, buy your house when you sell it. The mortgage industry wins again.

And yet there’s little anger out there. I don’t understand why. How come no one seems to be clamoring for a class action lawsuit to recoup some of that money?

If lawyers can figure how to get money back for the Madoff investors, surely they could figure out a way to get money out of the mortgage and banking industries for the rest of us. Like the Madoff investors, I’d be thrilled to get back even half of what I lost.